


In Another Lifetime

by madame_faust



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2019-10-26 13:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: Charles Duchamp should have known better than to let his friend talk him into taking in the side show at a traveling fair. But his disdain for the whole enterprise vanishes when he hears the sounds of a beautiful violin being played by a singularly hideous little boy.(Or, the Susan Kay/Charles Dance alternate universe crossover that no one asked for.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Madeleine is the world's worst mom, it's true - but what if she wasn't? Belladova loved her son and saw no ugliness in him - but what if she didn't? 
> 
> I've always been kind of bugged by the backstories in those versions, at least the logic of them. If Madeleine was so looking forward to her child's birth as the last thing she had connecting her to her late husband, wouldn't she be more inclined to love her child, regardless of what he looked like? And if Belladova was so distraught by the idea of bearing a child out of wedlock that she tried to end the pregnancy, why would she have a change of heart after her unwanted child was born?
> 
> One night of insomnia later and this is the result.

Charles realized his mistake as soon as he’d spent his meagre stipend to enter the ‘Hall of Horrors’ (not a hall at all, merely a hastily erected lean-to that might come crashing about their heads at any time). Blame it a weakness borne of youth. When Eugene Champlain suggested diverting from their usual course home to wile the evening away at the traveling fair, Charles was fully prepared to refuse. After all, what would Maman say, with her bourgeois airs and her insistence upon instilling in him an appreciation for high culture since he was in swaddling?

But Eugene turned his head with one hopeful suggestion:

“They might have aerialists, mightn’t they?”

Well, now. What red-blooded young man could turn his back on the promise of nubile young ladies in tights? 

Really, he ought to have known better. After all, in this sea of ramshackle wagons and drooping tents, where was one expected to hang a trapeze or set up a high wire? 

Instead they were treated to a ‘GENUINE SOUTH SEAS MERMAID’ which would have been worth the price of admission for Eugene and his belle-of-the-week Antoinette. The pair gaped at the shriveled corpse laid out in glory upon a satin pillow, until Charles squinted critically at the creature and declared it nothing more than the corpse of a monkey, sewn onto a fish’s tale. 

“You’re such a kill-joy,” Antoinette remarked bitterly, flouncing away from Charles as though he’d done her a great wrong. 

“You can see the stitches!” he retorted. 

“I’m short-sighted,” Antoinette replied primly; and honestly where did Eugene dig  _up_  these girls? Charles’s pride might have stung at the thought that his dim-witted fellow managed to find his way into more girl’s -  _ahem_  - good graces in a month than Charles himself might in a lifetime, but he consoled himself with the thought that girls like Antoinette were not the sort he was interested in anyway. Not the kind he could bring home to mother, that was certain.

“This isn’t a scientific exhibition,” Eugene reminded Charles. “You haven’t got to be such a snob about it.”

“I’d no intention of spending my last sou on bad taxidermy,” Charles shot back feeling more and more nettled by the minute; no it had  _nothing_  to do with the way Antoinette was hanging on Eugene’s arm and he hadn’t even a pair of white tights to distract him. It was only that his time and money might have been put to better use.

“Your step-father’s a doctor,” Eugene pointed out, rolling his eyes. “He’s coins enough to spare on you, I am sure.”

Charles said nothing, just surged ahead of the two of them, as Antoinette muttered that he didn’t  _have_  to come if he wasn’t going to _try_  to enjoy himself. 

Charles’s eyes flitting from museum piece to museum piece (here a set of dolls’ clothes allegedly worn by Mrs Tom Thumb, there a horned human skull declared to be the ‘Goat Man of the Indies’) without taking them in. It would be a cold day in hell indeed when Dr. Barye ‘spared’ a few coins on him. He’d put up quite an argument when Maman insisted that Charles reside with them at home during the terms of is indenture rather than in lice and rat-infested rooms.

 _“They’re good enough for the other apprentices,”_  Dr. Barye pointed out.

 _“Not for_  my  _son,”_  Maman retorted.  _“Not when his father was one of the firm’s founding partners.”_

Dr. Barye gamely tried to point out the advantages to having Charles out of the house (what young man didn’t like independence, the other apprentices might thing he was putting on airs and give him a hard time, they could use the additional space in the house for the other children, etc.). But Maman was resolute and though Dr. Barye’s opinion of his step-son might not be the highest, he did adore his wife and was not willing to risk the displeasure his insistence might cause. 

Neither his mother nor his step-father would approve of such a use of his time or money, he was certain. Maman would find the whole thing too gauche and low-brow, Dr. Barye would find it all backward and unscientific; diseased bodies were to be studied and treated,  _not_  put on display. Charles was racking his mind to come up with some excuse as to why he would be arriving home so very late to supper, when he heard  _it_. 

Music. The high, plaintive strings of a violin being played by a talented hand. It was not a tune he recognized, did not follow a classical measure or pattern, it was rough, strange, disorganized, but  _beautiful_.

At the end of the rows of macabre displays and half-hearted hoaxes there was a rough wooden stage that looked more like a shipping pallet than anything. A small crowd of early fair-goers were crowded round the figure of a boy playing the violin.

The violin was sized for an adult and the child was small, which accounted partially for the strangeness of his technique. Charles had been educated in music since he was small and fancied himself a deft hand at the violin; he could identify dozens of mistakes, _sins_  really in the boy’s bowing, fingering...but the sound was incredible and the complaints vanished, half-formed in his mind as he listened.

Charles drew closer, then stopped, a sickness rising in the pit of his stomach; the whole of the child’s head was covered in bandages, some bearing the brown marks of old blood. Tufts of dull red hair emerged here and there upon his head and there were only small slits in the bandages with space for his eyes to peer out. But he wasn’t looking at the crowd. His head was bowed, his eyes downcast; Charles wouldn’t be surprised if his eyes were closed. The boy seemed not to notice anything, his whole self and attention focused on the music.

A hand rose, self-consciously to touch the edge of the fine-crafted leather mask he wore himself. Not to hide his face, not principally. His employers knew it well, having become personally invested in his mother’s well-being and his own upbringing after his father’s untimely passing. Dr. Barye had it made, commissioned, when Charles determined he would follow in his father’s trade; he wanted to keep the dust and dirt of his chosen occupation from infecting his sinuses and settling in his lungs. 

No one in the crowded little Hall of Horrors had marked him or the mask, but Charles felt a surge of self-protective paranoia. He should go, he knew. Nevermind getting his money’s worth. If he was smart (and he fancied that he was), he should walk right out of there and go straight home.

But then a barker, who’d stood aside in the crowd while the boy played, declared that the child’s hideous face was outmatched only by the genius of his mind. Sing anything, he urged them. Any tune and the boy would play the notes back,  _perfectly_!

The boy stood still, violin hefted to his shoulder, eyes still cast down. If it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of his thin chest, Charles would have thought he was an automaton. 

Eugene and Antoinette had joined him and when the rest of the crowd was reluctant to call out, she volunteered a short (and off-key) few verses of “Sur le pont D’Avignon,” which the boy played, but was interrupted in his performance by a burly man with a large mustache who declared the tune too well-known to be impressive. 

A matron with a careworn face bravely warbled a bit of “Ave Maria,” which the boy rendered beautifully, but again the man with the mustache (who Charles was beginning to suspect was a plant) declared the song too well-known for the performance to be an act of genius. 

“Very well!” the barker said, as though he’d anticipated the comment. “You have heard the beauty - now see the horror. Oh, the blessings and the curses that God can bestow. Feast your eyes - if you _dare!_ ”

The boy took his cue and lowered the bow and violin, his thin arms hung at his sides and his eyes still were locked on the floor. The barker mounted the little stage and put his fingers under the boy’s chin in an effort to get him to raise his face. He started to unwind the bandages; a tightness in Charles’s chest was the only inkling he had that he’d started holding his breath.

“Oh!” Antoinette exclaimed, turning away once the sight was revealed to hurry into Eugene’s all too eager embrace. “It’s horrible!”

Indeed it was. Charles himself felt the bile rise in his throat and he turned away, closing his eyes and swallowing, though relief quickly overwhelmed the disgust he felt when first he looked upon the child. 

 _There, you see?_  was his first guilty thought.  _You’re not so bad after all._

He had been so afraid, in those few seconds before the boy’s face was revealed, that he would see a miniature version of _himself._ Sunken glowing eyes, a twisted mouth, too-thin skin stretched across jutting bone. The unsettling absence of a nose. 

But no. The child was horrible to look at, it was true, but he did not look like  _him_. No, somehow he looked worse. The flesh of the face was mottled red, and purple, bloated and twisting around they eyes, swallowing the cheeks, leaving only the mouth and chin untouched. There were unnatural divots and scars in the flesh, as though parts had been scooped out. And visible bright red sores like weeping boils, doubtless caused by bumps and scrapes to the delicate skin. 

As Charles looked at him again, he found himself thinking,  _I wonder if Dr. Barye could do something for him._  But what? The whole of the face was horrifically disfigured. This was no lesion that could be scraped or wart to be burnt off. The nose itself was flat and twisted, two oblong holes that allowed the boy to breathe and glimmered faintly, wetly, like a dog’s nose under the lantern light in the tent. It was dark within and without. Night had fallen. 

“Charles,” Eugene said, tugging at his sleeve, cocking his head toward the exit. “Antoinette wants to go home.”

“Take her home,” Charles replied, glancing down at Antoinette, face still pressed against Eugene’s shoulder, steadfastly not looking at the little boy whose perfect mouth was puckering slightly; difficult to tell, given the extent of his disfigurement, but Charles was almost sure he was trying not to cry. “I’ll be along.”

Charles remained behind a while longer, as the small crowd thinned then vanished. He was right; the large man was part of the show, for he collected the few coins thrown upon the stage, frowning under his mustache.

“Not a great haul,” he observed, putting the boy’s earnings into a little bag on his belt.

“It’ll be better come the weekend,” the barker said; he was winding the dirty bandages back around the boy’s head. “Not to worry.”

Finally the boy spoke, in a halting voice that Charles could barely make out. “Did I do alright?”

The barker’s voice was warm as he patted the boy on the head. “Perfectly alright, Erik. It’s only we got a crowd of bumpkins who don’t know any music they don’t learn at their maman’s knees or on their own knees in church. Not to worry; plenty more visitors will come before Sunday. You’ll see - ey!”

Charles stiffened; he’d been spotted. 

“Clear off,” the man with the mustache ordered, standing in front of Charles; for an ordinary man he’d block the view of the stage, but Charles was tall and could easily see over his shoulder. “Show’s over. Come back tomorrow if you’d like another look.”

The man took in the mask for a second, but paid greater mind to Charles’s suit and shoes; not a ‘bumpkin’, particularly. Not someone the man thought to be rough with. 

“Sorry,” Charles replied, swallowing his pride and being ordered away like a dog. Then, with a boldness to which he was accustomed, but a kindness to which he was _not_  he added. “The boy’s...face looked as though it might be infected. I was...concerned.”

The big man snorted and muttered, “How could you tell?” but the barker looked up at him in concern; no doubt the child was the biggest draw they had. Likely they’d see less profit than they did now if all that they had of him was his face, dried like a strip of old leather placed next to a violin on a pillow in the display area.

“Are you a doctor?” the barker asked Charles. The boy had sidled behind the barker’s legs, clutching his violin to his chest. 

“No, but my...my father is,” Charles not-quite lied. “He does charitable work, sometimes. I could bring him here. Later. Before your weekend performances. Just to...look.”

The mustachioed man and the barker exchanged a glance. Neither of them looked at or spoke to the boy. 

“I don’t like it,” the large man said. 

“A look couldn’t hurt,” the barker replied. Then addressed Charles. “He’d come here, would he? Not squirrel him off to some institution? Or give him to some resurrection men?”

Charles had _just_  enough affection for his stepfather to find the implication insulting. He folded his arms across his chest and retorted, “Dr. Barye studied in Paris, not in Scotland. He’s a decent man. He’d just...look him over. As I said.”

Why he’d said it, he did not know. Perhaps he felt a kinship for a child with a hideous face who life had been unkind to. Perhaps it was only that the boy - Erik - seemed to be about the same age as Charles’s stepbrother Etienne. Perhaps he had that which Pere Mansart called everyone’s God-given instinct to do some good. He didn’t know. He only knew he offered. That, for whatever reason, he cared about he fate of the poor little wretch who played the violin so inexpertly, but so beautifully. 

When Charles left to find his way home in the dark, he heard the men console themselves that, whatever his purpose, he likely wouldn’t be back.

 _Oh, I’ll be back,_ he thought, forcefully. _Whether or not Dr. Barye will see the creature. I’ll be back._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Madeleine has become my unexpected favorite in this story - no longer an abusive mom, but still a total brat.

Light was streaming in behind his closed eyelids. The scent of lilacs wafted all around - not that Erik could name the flower, he only knew it smelled nice - and it was that lovely, floral smell that let him know, before he opened his eyes, that he was not returned to the orphanage. 

But where was he? 

It felt as though he'd been asleep for a hundred years, but not on the hard wooden slats of a lurching wagon, or the stiff straw pallet at the orphanage. The feeling of a soft mattress beneath him and a cozy quilt wrapped round him were not foreign, exactly, but they were half-forgotten. He'd had a bed of his own when he lived with the Giant and the Witch. Only there wasn't any sunlight in that room for there had been no windows.

Tentatively, he opened his eyes - the light was intense, streaming in through gauzy curtains, painting the whole room a blinding white. But he blinked once, then twice, and the whole place came into focus. White lace curtains. Walls papered with a pattern of tiny yellow flowers. An imposing desk and cabinets like the kind that held plates or linens, but was instead filled with curious instruments, bowls and...knives.

Fear started to rise, sour in Erik's stomach, but it was nothing compared to the panic he felt when he identified where the smell of flowers was coming from. There was a woman in the corner of the room, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with skin white like fresh milk and a mouth red as blood. _Snow White and Rose Red_ , his mind supplied. Erik went still as stone, screwing his eyes shut; she was wearing a gown like a well-off lady and he was frightened of her. The only women who had ever been kind to him were nuns. _This_ was not a nun.

The floral smell got stronger and stronger. The rustle of her skirts sounded by his ear, heard over the pounding of the blood in his head. He tensed, waiting for screams or blows -

She did raise her voice, but it was not a scream of rage or horror. Instead she moved swiftly away from him, calling, "Etienne! Etienne! Your little foundling is awake! Come, quickly! The charity ward is _bustling_ today!"

Erik opened one eye, then the other. Relief washed over him, for she was gone. He tried to sit up, to hide, under the bed, perhaps where if he was giving a thrashing there'd be less room to land any truly hard blows, but his head swam and he sank back against the pillows with an involuntary moan.

Something fell off the cot upon which he lay and landed on the floor with a soft thud. At first he reared back, thinking it was a cat that might scratch him...but no. Merely a little stuffed thing, with worn off fur, and glossy glass eyes, scratched. A toy. Anxiety rose again and Erik wondered if he would be accused of having stolen it. 

The door opened again, abruptly, and a man strode in - not the Giant, he was small and slender though his hair was dark, as the Giant's had been. He wore little round spectacles over his blue eyes and his face was framed by neat side-whiskers. His expression was pinched and severe, but when his spoke his voice was gentle. 

"Well, how are we this morning, little one?" he asked, drawing a chair to the side of the cot. He folded a corner of the quilt down and held Erik's wrist in his own right hand and raised a pocketwatch to his ear with his left. Muttering quietly, he commented, "Pulse high, but stronger than it has been - you gave us quite a cause for concern last night."

The man dropped Erik's wrist and his hand went round to cup the back of his neck. He smiled and nodded contentedly to himself. 

"Fever's down - well done, young fellow," he said, replacing the watch and rising to walk behind the large desk. There he uncapped a pen and jotted down some notes in a ledger. "I'll be leaving those bandages on until evening, I don't like to expose open wounds to the air too much, not in the autumn when houses can get so stuffy. It's why I asked Madame to air the room - thought I'll be paying for that for the rest of the week. How are you feeling, my boy?"

Erik stiffened. Though this man looked nothing like the Giant, none but he ever called him 'my boy.' It was the last thing he said to him, before he left him with the nuns.

 _I'll return for you, my boy. This is only...a temporary arrangement, understand? Just until I can find a better situation for you - for_ us _. For_ all _of us._

The Giant never returned. Instead two other men came, removed him from the orphanage, took him with nothing but the clothes and his back and his violin. But the violin was nowhere to be seen and Erik was dressed in a nightshirt that was too big for him, not his tattered trousers and shirt. He wondered if they'd been robbed. 

Eyes wide in his head, voice trembling, Erik looked at the smiling man and asked, "Are...are you a resurrection-man?"

He'd been threatened with such before. If he was sick and tired and hungry, which was nearly all the time, and he fumbled his fingers upon the strings, if they lost more money than they made. They'd call up a resurrection-man to take him. They'd peel his face off, the men said. Like the skin of an apple, dry it up and put _that_ on display if he couldn't do what they'd taken him on to do. And leave his bones for the birds.

The man drew himself up and looked down at Erik curiously. "I most certainly am _not_. I am a doctor, my boy. Dr. Barye, I'll have you know, not some crude grave-robber. You are in my surgery. There now. I've told you something of myself, and I would be very much gratified if you told me something of yourself. What is your name, my boy?"

 _My boy_. That was what he'd liked being called best of all. Better than 'horrible creature' or 'monster' or 'poor wretch.' But there was a name, sometimes. As people had names. The nuns used the name, most often. It had been pinned to his shirt when the Giant left him in their care.

"Erik," he said softly. The Doctor paused, expecting more, but there was nothing more to say. 

"Just Erik?" he asked.

Erik nodded. As he did he noticed the weight of the bandages the Doctor had spoken of. They were heavy, much heavier than the strips of old rags that were his usual covering. They didn't smell badly. Everything still smelled faintly of flowers. 

"How old are you, Erik?" the Doctor pressed. "Seven years of age? Six? Surely not less than five?"

"I don't know," Erik replied softly. It had been a warm night when the Giant left him at the orphanage. Then it was cold when the men took him. They traveled as the days became warmer, then blazing hot. Now it was starting to turn cold again at night. 

It was probably a bad answer he'd given. The Doctor clicked his tongue against his teeth and squinted down at his ledger. He scratched something else down, then his eyes lit on the stuffed cat abandoned on the floor.

"Ah, Pompom," he said, addressing his comment to the ground. He crouched and picked it back up. Rather than accusing Erik of theft, however, he merely tucked it back among the blankets beside him, pulling the turned down quilt up to his chin. "My little girl, Marie, thought it might be a comfort to you. Get some rest. I'll have a spot of breakfast brought up for you - nothing too heavy on the stomach, naturally. Some thin bouillie, I think."

Then he left, keeping the door ajar, the window slightly open to let the air in. All his fretting and confusion proved exhausting; despite his fears at being brought to a strange new place, Erik found himself getting sleepy. Tentatively, he wrapped one arm around the little stuffed cat, hugging it close beside him. He did feel a little better; though he still wondered where he was, how he'd come to be there, where his violin was...

But all thoughts faded to nothing as sleep took him.

* * *

Elsewhere in the household, all was anarchy. At least it seemed that way to the house's mistress. Madame Madeleine Barye _hated_ disorder of any sort; unfortunately, disorder had been the theme of her life these past eighteen years. 

It might be better, she reflected sourly, if only she were _informed_ when her life was about to turn upside-down. If some kindly Seer did her the courtesy of knocking on her door and letting her know _this_ morning would be the last time she would see her late husband alive. If the midwife had patted her hand and gently informed her that the sudden shock of her husband's passing would result in her birthing the most hideous child in the province. That the aforementioned hideous child and her current husband would conspire, without consulting her, to vanish from the house under cover of darkness and unseat her darling Charles as the ugliest person she'd ever looked upon. 

Of course, she understood why they'd conspired. Often when she was at the tender age her eldest son was now, she felt that it was sometimes better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. Only she'd no kindly step-father to be her co-conspirator. Etienne knew she hated it when he brought patients into their home for procedures and consultations - let them sully their own bed linens, she thought. Never mind infected little bundles of fleas and lice that her son discovered at a traveling fair, of all the dishonorable, decrepit places. What _would_ the neighbors say?

Even now she felt the phantom presence of six-legged beasties crawling on her and she idly tugged the lace collar of her dress away from her long white throat. That was what she got for insisting on washing the little creature, who smelled almost as bad as he looked. She'd cut his hair while she was at it. Etienne was unsure as to his little foundling's age, but Madeleine was convinced that, in all his short years, no one had ever got near him with a comb. 

Etienne came out of his study just as Charles came down the stairs from his bedroom, dressed for the firm, looking as smart as he was able. She always ensured he was well turned-out, even when he was small. Hair neatly trimmed and parted, short-pants immaculate, hands never sticky from jelly or jam. Some of her fastidiousness rubbed off; whenever she saw him his hat was always brushed, shoes polished, and his collar and cuffs starched. 

"The mask?" she asked, turning her back deliberately on her husband; Charles was little more than a child. He could be forgiven for a flight of compassionate fancy. It was the job of the adult, the father (even if only by marriage), to curb flights of fancy so that they did not gallop amok through her neatly ordered life. 

Charles shook his head, "They prefer me at the drafting tables, for the most part, value me more for design and mathematics...is _he_ alright?"

Though her son began his remarks by addressing her, his mismatched eyes drifted away from Madeleine to focus on Etienne. Supposing that a snub was well and good, but ignoring the welfare of a child - however filthy and hideous - was going a bit beyond the pale, even for her, she folded her arms and gazed expectantly at her husband. 

"As well as can be," Etienne replied coolly, removing his spectacles and cleaning them on his pocket handkerchief. "I'll change the dressings this afternoon, his fever has gone down and he was lucid, though his pulse was still rather elevated. It might be a lingering effect of the ether."

Madeleine disguised the trembling of her fingers by clenching her hands under her elbows. What a ghastly thing, the operation. Of course, she had not been present in the surgery for the procedure, but she saw the soiled linens and bandages left in its wake. Such a quantity of blood, black and diseased looking. Etienne had been required to cut away into decaying flesh, to create new wounds that, with careful tending and ardent prayer, he hoped might not become foetid and stinking like the wounds that worried Charles so when he first saw the child. 

"His name is Erik," Etienne continued, replacing his spectacles. "He does not know how old he is - I fancy seven or eight."

"Nonsense," Madeleine broke in, shaking her head. "Why, he's half the size of little Etienne."

Her husband nodded curtly, allowing her the truth of the statement. "Quite right, my dear, but I think he has suffered malnourishment. That and a lack of sunlight can stunt the bones and muscles, especially of young children. I was wondering if you might have the cook prepare him a little something - a broth, nothing that will upset his stomach. Habitual lack of food does not respond well to a sudden diet of rich offerings."

Madeleine wrinkled her nose in distaste, imagining order the maid to scrub the child's sick out of her carpets as she had blood out of their linens. They'd gone through two girls of all work in a year; working in the household of a doctor was no light task. How foolish she'd been to imagine that marrying him would be any better. 

Bouillie, she decided. With jam stirred in for little Etienne and Marie, plain for Erik the Invalid. 

"Will you require me to spoon-feed your charge?" she asked coolly. "Only I don't think the girl will do it - you should have seen her face when I gave her the laundry yesterday."

"So sorry I missed it, my dear, it must have been a most diverting spectacle," he replied, just as coolly. 

"I could stay home from the firm," Charles offered, breaking the frigid silence that descended as his mother and stepfather engaged in a silent battle of wills, wondering who would break first; either Etienne, apologizing for bringing such trouble into their home, or Madeleine apologizing for being such a pill about it. Madeleine broke the silence, but with no apology.

"Don't you dare!" she exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at her son. "All this - and I won't have you skiving off of your work, sullying your father's good name and reputation. No, I'll manage. If worst comes to worst, I'm sure little Marie will be happy to lend a hand, having taken such a keen interest in the matter."

And of course, the younger children could not help but notice the commotion. Marie donated her favorite little toy cat to the cause; pity it would likely have to be burned to prevent the spread of whatever pestilence the little wraith in the surgery was carrying. At least Etienne would not be underfoot all day; thank Heaven for school. 

Charles came down the stairs, bag with his drafting papers in one hand, hat in the other. Madeleine presented her cheek for her morning kiss before he disappeared into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a bun, but he glided past her toward the surgery. "I'll just look in on him, then I'll go."

Madeleine watched him, frowning. Etienne took advantage of her distraction to sidle off in the direction of the kitchen, likely to give the cook instructions on what to feed their children and his foundling. 

Charles had always been a puzzlement; brilliant and scornful of those who were not (he hadn't many playfellows as a child, preferring his own company or that of adults...though, that might have been her own distaste for children who were not her own rubbing off on him). Yet, he was also tender-hearted to an alarming degree. When the village priest informed him that animals did not have souls and so he'd not being seeing his childhood spaniel again in Heaven, he'd cried so hard he made himself sick and had to be given laudanum to sleep. He'd been nearly ten years old at the time, far too old, Madeleine thought, for such a display. But that was Charles; the biting wit she liked to think he inherited from her. The tender heart was all his father's. 

She couldn't be cross with him, not really. And not about this.

Madeleine approached the surgery, tapping Charles on the shoulder to alert him of her presence; if the boy, Erik, was asleep she didn't want to wake him. 

"There, you see?" she whispered, craning her neck up as close to his ear as she could get without standing on her toes. "Fast asleep, he'll keep until you come home."

Charles nodded. She saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. There was a very sad look about his eyes and she put a hand on his elbow to draw him away; she didn't like him to leave the house distressed, melancholy made him look more like the Grim Reaper than Nature itself had all on its own. 

"It's...well," he trailed off, glancing behind again at the said little waif swathed in bandages. "It might have been me, eh? In another life."

Madeleine drew back as though he'd struck her.

"Certainly _not_ ," she declared, holding his arm more firmly now, dragging him away from the room. "What a thing to say! No, I'm sure that...that poor boy comes from miserable circumstances. The gutter, or the street or...no. No, certainly not. That's a wicked thought, Charles, and I expect Father to give you a good penance on Saturday to make it up."

"About Saturday - " he began, but his mother cut him off with a shake of her head. She felt one of her hairpins give way under the assault and a black curl sprang loose; God in heaven, everything was falling apart at the seems. 

"So long as you live in this house, you will attend Confession and Mass with the family, on that point I am _quite_ firm," she replied. It was Tuesday. Hopefully, by Thursday little Erik would be well enough to be returned to his keepers. She would pray for him. But she was certainly not obligated to him beyond that. She was storing up points in Heaven, sure was sure, by extending so much Christian charity to him as she had done. 

"My kiss," she demanded, presenting her cheek. Charles inclined his head and kissed her. Madeleine smiled up at him and he returned it, crooked, for his mouth was far from symmetrical, but wan in a way his smile usually was not. "Go along with you, you'll be late."

She stood in the parlor, halfway between the kitchen and the surgery. Madeleine waited until her son was out of earshot before she released a gusty and unladylike sigh. The young children would be up soon, demanding breakfast, probably asking about the little boy their father and brother brought home from the fair. Etienne already wanted to know if they could keep him. That was how he phrased it. 'Keep him.' Like a pet. 

Little wonder, his asking. They hadn't had an animal in the house since Sasha passed, Charles taking her loss so badly. Now that he was older, she wondered if it was time to move on and get the little ones a dog.

They were not, under _any_ circumstances, keeping the oddity in the surgery. On that point she would be firm. Once he was well enough to be moved, move he would, back to the streets or where ever it was he'd come from. Madeleine was a good Christian woman, but this was not a foundling hospital and there were limits to saintly charity. 

Gone by Saturday, she decided with a resolute nod as she made her way into the kitchen to oversee the little ones' breakfast. She would pray for him at Mass, when she remembered to. And they would put this whole ugly incident behind them.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For flashbacks to **child abuse** and **child neglect.**

_Slowly he inched along the chair rail, stepping as silently and carefully as he could. He'd had a lot of practice. Heel. Toes. Heel. Toes. He scarcely dared breathe; the house was silent and so too would he be. No squeak of a loose floorboard would betray him, no scuffling of impatient feet._

_The house was silent. He was alone. And just outside the drawn curtains, the sun was shining._

_Heel. Toes. Heel. Toes - ah! Careful! Beware the edge of the carpet, the long flat tendrils of the tassels ready to snare his toes and make them trip. But he knew the way, knew the hazards. Almost there..._

_Past the furniture upon which he was only rarely given permission to sit. Past the door which led to the Outside, where even more rarely he was permitted to go, only when his hand was held by one much larger and rougher than his own and his face was covered. Almost there..._

_Yes! He caught the heavy drapery in his hands triumphantly. With a tug he parted the curtains, heaving one side over until - finally - sunlight dappled the carpet and washed over his left hand imparting warmth and life to skin that was almost as white as the windowsill itself._

_If he put both hands against the windowsill and braced himself upon the wall with his bare feet, he could just manage to pull himself up, feel that delicious warmth upon his bare face, squinting his eyes against the brightness that glowed red behind his closed eyelids -_

_The door to Outside opened. Disaster._

She _appeared in the doorway, like a wicked witch from a fairy tale, only she was all too real. Wispy tendrils of red hair framed a pale-skinned face with large blue eyes and a large, soft mouth which screwed up in disgust at the sight of him. He fell off his perch landing upon the floor with a clatter._

_"GET AWAY!" she shrieked, voice filling the room in an unearthly wail. "YOU DISGUSTING THING! GET AWAY! GET AWAY!"_

_And the the Witch lunged for him. With a cry of fear, he tried to hide, under the sofa, under the sideboard, anywhere, anywhere she could not reach. But her hands turned to talons and she caught him by the shirt - she hated to touch him,_ hated _it, hated_ him _, and he tensed, bracing himself to be thrown against the wall or back into the room where he was kept, from which he never ought to have ventured..._

"Wake up!" 

_Erik twisted, trying to get away, to loosen her grip that he might scramble back to his room and hide under the blankets upon his pallet. He never should have come out. It was too dangerous._

"Wake up!"

_She shook him violently, setting his teeth rattling in his head. Blue eyes, horrible frightening eyes welled with tears at the sight of him._

_"You must never come out! That was what he told me! I'd_ never _have to see you! I don't want to see you, do you hear me, you horrible little thing? Never! Never!"_

"Please, wake up! Maman! Maman! Help!"

_She was dragging him as he sobbed and fruitlessly twisted, trying to choke out an apology that she would not hear. His feet and legs clattered against the floor; before morning there would be bruises up and down his body._

_"You evil little monster! That's what you are! A wicked, sinful little beast! I shouldn't have to see you! I shouldn't! You make me sick - the sight of you makes me sick. Sick!"_

_The door to his dark room was wrenched open. He was flung toward the pile of bedding upon which he passed most of his days. He braced himself for a hard fall -_

"What the devil is going on in here?"

Erik woke with a fearful cry, panic-stricken for he did not know where he was. The room was bright and bursting with forbidden sunlight. And a woman - was it? - no, no a different woman. Taller. Not as pale. And with dark hair and dark eyes. 

And then another version of her in miniature, a tiny girl with glossy black curls peering over the edge of the bed as he had done to the windowsill. The little one wrinkled her nose.

"I tried to wake him up, Maman, but he wouldn't wake up! I think he had an accident."

The woman rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and her mouth moved along to words Erik could not hear. The blankets were wet beneath him and his heart thudded in his chest in fear of what she might do.

"I'm going to - _hmmm_ ," the woman bit back her words and shook her head.

The little one peered up at her curiously. "You're going to what, Maman?"

"Never you mind," the woman snapped. "Get _away_ , Marie, you're giving me a headache."

 _Get away..._ Erik trembled in remembered fear, but the little girl merely rolled her eyes in an uncanny imitation of the mother.

"You've always got a headache..." she groused, but she did leave, looking curiously back at Erik as she did so.

For his part, Erik sat stiffly among the soiled linens, terrified tears springing to his eyes. What would she do to him?

"I'm going to _kill_ you, Etienne," the woman muttered under her breath. "Imagine, leaving me all alone with this - _'Oh, let him sleep!'_ \- Let him sleep my left foot, now look at the fine mess we're in. Up you come, boy, up you come. I suppose I ought to have woken you, but _doctor's orders_ , you know."

The woman did not strike him, as Erik expected her to do, nor did she dash him to the floor. She picked up up under the arms and set him on his feet near the doorway, upon the polished wooden floor. Before she released him she looked him hard in the eyes.

"Can you stand? Eh? Speak up, I know you're no mute," she said in a voice that was hard as the floor upon which he stood, but she wasn't screaming at him, or shaking him. "Very well, I suppose you haven't a choice, I've got to strip that cot before the stains set. I'm going to _kill you_ , Etienne!"

The last bit she did not speak or shout, but sang. It would have been a lovely sound, but for the threat. Erik was _very_ grateful that he was not Etienne.

As he glanced around the room, he found the recollections coming in pieces. He was in a surgery. There had been a doctor. And that woman...that woman _opening_ the windows. 

She still smelled of flowers as she removed the sheets and carted them off somewhere. Erik was not left long alone before she picked him up again and carried him bodily to the kitchen, talking to him all the while. 

"I suppose we're in for a queer bit of luck, you and I! The girl just heated water for the washing - every day is wash day in the surgery! Do you know, the neighborhood thought I was moving up in the world? A tradesman is one thing, but a _doctor_! I think the old biddies from the Ladies Guild thought I was marrying a physician, you know, one of those fine Parisian gentlemen who look at your tongue and take your pulse and pronounce you well or infirm? But, oh no! I settled down with a _surgeon_. Sometimes it really is best to do business with the devil you know..."

Once again Erik was deposited gently on a bare floor, stone, this time, in a kitchen where a stocky woman in a neat apron stood near a steaming copper . The little girl was back, standing on a stool by a wooden table, staring not at him now, but at the woman. In her right hand was a spoon dripping sticky golden honey on the floor. 

"Marie!"

The girl scampered past - taking the spoon with her. The dark-haired woman spoke to the one in the apron and bade her escort Marie to a Mademoiselle Perrault's home.

"Are you sure, madame?" the woman asked, glancing down at Erik, still standing on the stones; his head felt light, as though there was nothing but hot air between his ears. The room pitched and swayed and he fought to remain on his feet.

The dark-haired woman caught his shoulders in her hands - just hands. Not talons. 

"Yes," she said firmly, nodding toward the door. "Go off before she dribbles honey all over the furniture."

Once the woman in the apron was gone, the dark-haired woman - Madame - turned toward him and shook her head. 

"Charles was so fastidious, he hated having his hands dirty," she said, speaking again and now not seeming to expect a response. She briskly stripped the dirty nightshirt off him and deposited him in the warm water, leaving him briefly to put on an apron of her own and roll the sleeves of her gown to the elbows. "I thought that was ordinary,  _then_ when Etienne came along and eschewed baths and seemed content to live his days wallowing in _mud_ , I thought _he_ was an aberration. Now with Marie, I know better."

She knelt beside him, lathering up washcloth and a cake of soap as she set to cleaning him. It was strange to be submerged in water like this, especially hot water; Erik had only ever washed with cold water and greasy soap, nothing like this that made so many bubbles and smelled flowery as the lady did. It made him want to slip underneath the water and never wake up again...

Madame caught the back of his head with her hand, frowning.

"No, we can't have the bandages get wet," she tutted. "Not until Dr. Barye comes home - and God alone knows the day or the hour, he's attending a birth. _Twins._ Look lively now, I can't have you falling asleep in there."

Erik blinked owlishly at her behind the bandages that he only just remembered covered his face. He did his best to remain upright and alert when she returned, with a fuzzy, soft-looking piece of cloth. She lifted him out of the water - he wished she had just left him for the water was warm and the air was cold - but she wrapped him up in the cloth and rubbed at his arms and legs so that he was soon dry and warm and placed in another nightshirt. 

"There," she said. "Comfortable?"

 _Comfortable._ What on earth did that mean?

Erik did not answer for he had no answer. Madame frowned, but he was too tired to brace himself. He merely closed his eyes so he wouldn't see the blows coming.

But she did not strike him. She lifted him up again, but did not hold him away from her as she had last time; she held him against her hip and carried him out of the kitchen pressed against her.

Erik held his breath, suddenly more awake than he had been in ages. He hadn't been this close to another person in...in...

But a memory stirred - a memory or a dream? - of men talking, voices all around him. It had to have been a dream, _had_ to, for in his memory the world was on fire.

 _"I wouldn't keep a wild animal in such a deplorable state!" a voice that sounded vaguely familiar exclaimed, but not_ his _voice, not the Giant's voice, just a man's voice. "Let alone a child!"_

 _"Well...that's not your concern, is it?"_ That _voice he knew all too well and wished he'd didn't. "Why, is he sick?"_

_"He's burning up with fever! Look at him! Those wounds on his face, they're infected, boiling over with pus - why in Heaven's name didn't you send for a doctor?"_

_"Doctors cost money and_ he's _got to_ earn _his keep - "_

 _"He won't be able to earn_ anything _if you don't give him over to us, you imbeciles! Didn't you hear the doctor? He might not last the night!"_

That _voice he'd never heard before, never in his life. It was a man's voice, he supposed, but a_ beautiful _voice. Like he imagined God Himself might sound. Only he never imagined God sounding so very angry._

_Someone lifted him, he was sure of it. Strong arms held him tightly_

_"Are you sure you don't mind - "_

_And the glorious voice right by his ear._

_"Of course not, he hardly weighs anything."_

Madame's voice cut into his memories, a gusty sigh near his ear. "Poor wretched little thing."

Soon he was lying down again. The hours passed in a blur. At one point he was conscious of his head being raised, Madame muttering, "I might come to regret this," and a spoonful of a warm broth being pressed against his lips. He slipped and swallowed, not remembering the last time he'd had anything in his stomach. Then later a weight was lifted off his face and he felt cool air against his skin until he was wrapped back up again in clean bandages.

He wondered if he _hadn't_ survived after all. Being warm and cared for - was that what Heaven was like? The Witch said he'd come straight from the mouth of Hell, but the nuns - and more importantly, the Giant - said that wasn't so. That all people came from God. And good people would go back to Him someday. To live in the clouds with the angels who sang beautiful music forever and ever.

When next Erik came to full consciousness, he was able to use the chamber pot in the surgery. The room was darker than it had been, but some light still glowed behind the still-open windows. He longed to approach, but dared not to. Though he was far, far, away from the Witch, a small part of his mind feared she would find him yet. 

He had been about to clamber back into the bed when he heard it. Music. _Beautiful_ music.

When Erik imagined Heaven, he imagined bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds and golden light all around. Not papered walls and wooden furniture. If he had to guess, he wouldn't think he was in Heaven, he would think he was just in a house. Maybe this was Purgatory; a comfortably appointed waiting place until he was deemed worthy to live forever among the clouds with the angels.

Yes, he determined as he skirted around the walls as silently as he could. Heel. Toes. Heel. Toes. Angels played harps. The instrument he heard was a piano.

There were voices raised in tense argument somewhere nearby, but the piano drowned them out. Erik peered into the room from which the sound echoed. There were sofas and tables laden with plants and porcelain figurines. And three figures within. The little girl who liked honey was sitting on a footstool, a doll perched on her knee. An older boy with dark hair and small spectacles - Erik had never seen a child wearing spectacles before, only men and priests - and a man seated at the piano. Erik could only see the back of him, but even so he could tell that he was tall, with dark hair and broad shoulders. Every so often he would nod and the boy with the spectacles would turn a page of the music. When the song ended, the little girl gave a quiet cry of approval and clapped the hands of her dolls together in muffled applause. 

One of the man's long-fingered hands reached out and ruffled the hair of the boy with the spectacles. "Well, done, Etienne, you're the best page-turner I've ever employed."

The boy grinned; he was missing both his front teeth. "Does that mean you'll pay me?"

The man chuckled. "Only in compliments."

But Erik wasn't listening to the words they spoke, not really, only the sound. The boy sounded much the same as the other boys had from the orphanage; high-pitched, like a badly-piped piccolo. But the _man_! That was the voice he heard in his head, the angry voice, only now it was kind and gentle. The voice he thought must belong to God Himself.

Despite his promise to himself to be silent, Erik must have gasped, or made some other sound to indicate his presence. The girl turned and saw him at once, standing up so swiftly she knocked the stool she had been sitting on over with a clatter.

"There he is!"

The little boy's mouth dropped open and the man turned upon the piano bench and - oh! Oh, no! _No, no, no!_

The Witch had been right. Heaven didn't want him. Heaven could _never_ want him. He was evil. Bore the mark of sin for all to see. And God would not take his soul for he did not come from God.

The Devil sat upon the piano bench. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, like a leering skeleton given life, the flesh twisted where the leaping flames of Hell had bit into it. The Devil rose, a hand outstretched, coming to take him to Hell.

"Erik..."

The Devil knew his _name_.

With a scream, Erik turned and ran, _ran_ , as fast and as far as he could. 


	4. Chapter 4

Charles kept his composure as his mother and Dr. Barye broke off from their arguing to rush into the sitting room where little Erik had folded himself into the corner, shrieking and howling and carrying on as though he was being tortured.

"Evidently, he finds me frightening," Charles informed them calmly. Maman gave an unladylike snort at that.

"Has _he_ looked in a mirror, recently?" Charles heard her mutter, but if Dr. Barye had a retort, he did not hear it. As the catalyst to the wailing, Charles thought it best if he absented himself from the room.

The third floor of the house had been his unofficial domain for some time - it was a long hot, summer that he and Dr. Barye spent polishing the floors, caulking the windows, papering the walls and opening the flue of the seldom-used fireplace to make a proper bedroom for him. The house really was too big for Maman and himself, but when his father bought it for her, it was with the idea that it would be the home of a large, bustling family someday. Those hopes had been dashed along with his head in the months leading up to Charles' own birth.

It was to his bedroom he dashed. Where he could be alone for a while. Where he could loose his composure, if only for a few hours.

Composure was something he'd learned from an early age. There was an age of ignorance, dimly remembered. And age when he was old enough to walk and talk, hazy in his memory, but these were some of his _first_ memories. Of holding his mother and Mademoiselle Perrault's gloved hands as they went to the village to run errands or go to church or take Sasha for a walk. He remembered them towering over him, their billowing skirts like clouds shifting and swaying as he walked between them.

Usually he was looking down, either keeping an eye on Sasha's progress down the high street on her lead, or searching the ground for flowers, pretty stones, or attractive leaves his mother might let him take home so long as he wrapped his findings in a handkerchief and didn't stain his hands or his pockets. 

Passers-by gave them a wide berth, usually, but every once in a while they would stop and stare, the blood draining from their faces. Sometimes there would be shouts or shrieks or gasps. Or worse. It was this the worse, that robbed him of his innocence. And taught him composure.  

Once, he recalled standing in a copse of lilacs on the edge of the roadway; he'd gone to pick some, on his mother's orders, for they were her favorite flower and she wanted some for the dining table. They smelled sweet and heavenly and their soft buds tickled his little hands as he reached up, tugging and twisting the stems to free them. Being a small boy, he wasn't having an easy time of it and had liberated more leaves than flowers.

A man's voice sounded above him, _'Let me give you a hand there, son - '_

Charles must have been...three or four. Not older than that, surely, for when he was five years of age, he would have known better. Would have known to scurry back to his mother, kept his head low, politely refused the offer of help. But he was young then, too young to realize the potential danger in doing what he did.

He looked up. And probably smiled at the offer of help, thinking how pleased his mother would be at receiving a nice, big bunch of flowers for their supper table -

The pleasure was short-lived. The man shouted and kicked him, which might have been the instinctive reaction to seeing a frightening thing, but he kept _on_ kicking him, over and over, the hard sole of a boot a bludgeon against Charles's ribs and back. Charles landed in the dirt, instinctively curling up into a ball. Whether he'd cried out, he did not recall, he might have been too stunned. He missed what happened next, but the story went down as something of a legend in their household. 

Maman _ran_ toward him. Mademoiselle Perrault put her hand to God and swore that for the first time in all their acquaintance, Madeleine took off at an absolute sprint, hoops and petticoats flying about her. She held aloft the only weapon at her disposal - a parasol - and wielded it like a club, directly into the head of the man who was attacking her son. 

Charles remembered her screaming - he did not recognize the words (in later tellings, when he was older, Mademoiselle Perrault added the little detail that she was swearing like a sailor all the while) - and then she picked him up in her arms, for once in her life never minding about the dirt and grass staining her gown, and marched him straight home. The battered and broken parasol was left behind, a testimony to her ferocity. 

Fortunately, he wasn't seriously injured - battered and bruised, yes, but nothing that required a doctor's care. Mademoiselle Perrault tentatively suggested that they not go to that particular park anymore, but Maman wouldn't hear of it.

_'We'd every right to be there!'_ Maman insisted whenever the tale of Madeleine the Barbarian came up. _'What sort of man was he, I wonder, going after little boys like that!'_

He was the father-in-law of one of the factory wives of Rouen, they learned from the gossip in church the following Sunday. Come up to visit his son and his new family. Word was, after he was viciously attacked by a madwoman in a public park, he took the next train out of town, allegedly with two black eyes and a split lip.

Maman was unmoved by his alleged plight.

_'I performed a public good,'_ she insisted. _'The mayor ought to have given me a medal.'_

Being a good Catholic woman, however, she did confess her actions to PèreMansart, though a large part of her hoped that her actions would fit under St. Augustine's definition of a just war. He did not take quite the same view. Though the violence on the man's part was unjustified, Père Mansart thought that compassion and understanding was called for in this situation. After all, he reasoned, one did not see a boy like Charles every day. Shock, horror, and disgust were unfortunate reactions, but understandable. 

Maman never quite learned to hold her tongue and smooth her face into calm compassion. Never learned to softly tut and say softy, _'Yes, yes, the poor boy, I'm so sorry for the shock of it. We bear it as best we can.'_

Charles had to do it for her. Had to learn to avert his eyes, duck his head, turn away, apologize for existing in the same space as normal people, ordinary people with faces as men and women ought to have. The mask made it easier - better confusion and wary suspicion than the alternative, he thought. And, to be fair, most people were sensible and decent enough sorts to either mask their own reactions to him by pretending he did not exist or by treating him with overly-solicitous kindness, likely offering their pain in doing so to the Holy Souls in Purgatory. 

Still, every once in a while he was painfully reminded of just how monstrous he looked in other people's eyes. It didn't do to become complacent, to forget; it made the remembering that much more difficult. 

There was a strange detachment required in looking at one's own face and attempting to view it from an outside perspective. As though he'd never seen it before. But that was the task Charles set for himself as he picked up his father's old shaving mirror (useless to him for his cheeks were hopelessly bare still, but it was something of his father's that Maman hadn't gotten rid of when she married Dr. Barye) and studied himself. Tried to see what little Erik had seen. What made him run and cry.

It was all in evidence, of course. The deep-set eyes, one dark, one light. The absence of a nose, the twisted mouth, the malformation of bone and flesh only partially hidden by careful combing back of his hair. And the condition of the skin, thin and oddly translucent, with the course of his veins showing through in places like a living anatomical illustration. Yet there were other things too, little things, that lent a condition of ordinariness to his otherwise spectral appearance. A small puckered scar on his chin, from where he'd fallen off a borrowed bicycle when he was eleven (he'd figured out how to pedal, but couldn't get the damned thing to _stop_ ). A mole on his right temple in precisely the spot where his mother said his father had one. She used to kiss that spot often when he was small. 

But of course, strangers, like that child, saw only the horror of it all. Charles lay the mirror face-down on the desk, dropping his head into his hand with a sigh. Really, should he have expected better? An automatic solidarity with another hideous boy? Ridiculous; childish fancies that he was too old for. 

Yet, he couldn't help but feel so sorry for the boy. It was a sensation that went beyond empathy - it was an identification with another person he'd never felt before, combined with a sickly dread in his stomach. _That might have been me._

If his mother wasn't _quite_ so taken with herself that she insisted that her son be treated with the same level of respect-bordering-on-reverence that she expected for herself. If she hadn't remarried a doctor for whom a facial disfigurement was a condition to be managed, not a blight to be afraid of. If Mademoiselle Perrault had married and had children of her own, so that she was not so willing to pour out all the love her generous heart had on the hideous son of her oldest friend. It had nothing to do with _him_ , no matter what his mother said. It was only that his circumstances were lucky. 

_Comparatively_ lucky, he amended to himself. It was most _un_ lucky that his father had been killed. Even more unlucky that Maman's insistence upon viewing the corpse produced such an effect of shock to her delicate condition was disastrous upon his still-developing self. If his father had lived...

A knock on the door startled Charles from his melancholia. Quickly, he composed himself. Daubed at his eyes with his handkerchief, straightened his waistcoat and went to the door, already calling, "Come in."

Dr. Barye. That was a surprise; Charles thought it was probably going to be little Etienne, asking him to come downstairs and read him a story before bedtime. 

"He's quiet now, he's gone to bed," Dr. Barye informed him, not using names, but Charles was certain he was talking about Erik. "I can't imagine what sort of life that child's lived, prattling on about sin and Hellfire. I would have assumed him a product of the roads and highways, but evidently someone taught him his catechism."

"'Hell is empty,'" Charles replied coolly, gesturing toward himself. "'And all the devils are here.'"

Dr. Barye rolled his eyes; he never had much of a theatrical bent. "Anyway. He's settled down - but that's what I've come to talk to you about. The men we collected him from. They've gone."

"Gone?" Charles repeated, brow furrowing. True, he'd avoided the fairgrounds that day - but it had only been a _day_. Surely they wouldn't have pulled stakes so suddenly. But Charles could not make heads nor tails of it and lost his eloquence in puzzling it out. " _Gone_ -gone?

"They might be back," Dr. Barye shrugged. "Or, more probably, they knew they weren't going to turn a profit with their star attraction bedridden, so they cut their losses and journeyed on to find the next unfortunate to exploit."

The last he spat out rather angrily. Dr. Barye hated the spectacle of the side-show. It was the logician in him. Let such people find useful work. For instance, getting themselves installed as copyboys at their fathers' old architectural firm, _not_ go about reinforcing provincial credulity and dangerously unscientific notions about humanity. Or, if they could not be useful, let them be put away in hospitals and asylums where they could be looked-after and properly cared for. 

It remained to be seen whether Dr. Barye deemed little Erik useful or not. But for the time being...

"What are you going to do about him?" Charles asked, fearing the answer, just a little.

"Do?" Dr. Barye asked, sounding surprised by the question. "Care for him, until he's back on his feet. Try to...place him, I suppose. Find his people, if he has any."

Charles let out a little noise of disbelief. "If they _claim_ him, you mean. You hear about children _like that_ being sold off by the bad element for money."

In the face of sarcasm and disdain, Dr. Barye remained unmoved. It was part of what made him such a good doctor - and such a good match for Charles's mother. 

"You also hear of abductions," Dr. Barye pointed out sensibly. "Or he might be an orphan. He's so young, though...well. In any case, we'll try to find a place for him."

"And if we don't?" Charles asked, thinking of the worst case scenario, the little boy patched up, washed, fed, clothed, and then left on the doorstep of some godforsaken orphanage. Remaining alone, neglected and unwanted until he was fourteen. Then left to the streets. _It might have been me._

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Dr. Barye said. "In any case, I know this is your home, you ought to be comfortable in your own home. And ordinarily I wouldn't suggest it, only the boy is of such a nervous disposition, and so recently come out of a fever, that any further excitement might exacerbate his condition - "

"I'll wear the mask," Charles cut in, having suspected what Dr. Barye's request would be long before he asked the question. He'd resolved to already, before he'd come upstairs. Once he set himself the task of remembering just _how_ ugly he was. How upsetting it could be to look at him. It was painful, but he remembered. He'd wear the mask for little Erik's sake. It would be cruel not to. 

With a nod of gratitude and a convulsive movement of his right arm (Dr. Barye seemed about to clasp his shoulder, though he realized that Charles likely didn't want him to), he said good-night and made his way down the stairs to join the rest of the family. 

Charles shut the door behind him. It was far earlier than he usually took himself to bed, but the late night the evening before coupled with the evening's events made him tired. To bed, then. And tomorrow, he would don the mask. Little Erik would recover and then...and then...

It had been years since Charles prayed faithfully before bed. But tonight he made an exception. Kneeling down he muttered recitations of 'Our Father' and 'Hail, Mary,' before his voice and his thoughts got carried away with him.

"Look after that boy, Erik," Charles prayed quietly, but sincerely. "Let him not come to anymore harm. Let us do some good for him, if we can."

 


End file.
